Advances in high-brightness light emitting diodes (LED) have created opportunities for the use of LED in different lighting technologies, including small mobile data projectors. Light from the LED is projected onto a micro-display, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) or digital micro-mirror device (DMD). One challenge of the micro projector technology is that the micro-displays generally have a rectangular shape, and LED emit light in a rounded, hemisphere shape, which does not conform to the shape of the micro-display. Accordingly, since the shape of the light emitted from the LED does not conform to the shape of micro-display devices, the efficiency and uniformity of the LED light and the projected image is poor. Some approaches have attempted to address this problem. However, some of these known approaches require multiple lenses and thereby increase the size of the projection system, resulting in substantially larger projection devices.
Therefore, existing LED light shaping systems have these and other limitations. Accordingly, there is a need for an LED light shaping device and illumination system that solves these and other shortcomings.